CREEPY FUN:

The Into the Dark film series by Hulu and Blumhouse have been a treasure. Each month Hulu releases a new exclusive horror movie based around a different holiday and this years’ New Year’s offering is New Year, New You. The film is a darkly comic story about three friends who reunite with one another and join an old pal - who had become a social media self-help guru - to see in the new year.

The Into the Dark series has been giving new opportunities to female directors to get big exposure and the director of New Year, New You is Sophia Takal. She was interview by EW.com about her film and the work.

“It’s a darkly comic horror movie about a group of friends from high school who reconnect,” says Takal. “One of the women is a self-care social media celebrity, and there’s a lot of tension between the women and issues from the past that come out in weird ways.”

“I worked with a casting director that Blumhouse brought on and we talked a lot about wanting there to be different types of women in the movie,” says Takal. “Also important was finding actresses who are not only very talented — which all of these women are — but also intelligent, thoughtful, [and] who wanted to [explore] self-care, social media culture and how it can breed a lot of narcissism. For me, it’s not just about making a movie, but it’s also about examining issues and seeing if we can learn something and work together to explore these things together as a cast and crew. Hopefully, that bleeds into the movie, so that when people are watching it, they question the ideas they have about what it means to be successful, what it means to be valuable as a human being. So much of our society is outwardly-focused and focused on external validation, and social media turns us into a product in a way, always needing more and more validation. I think that can be insidious and damaging to people, especially young women.”